History has seen the development of numerous footwear products designed for imparting greater comfort and/or utility to a typical wearer via the provision of, for example, specially designed soles which may also have some aesthetic value given the design used. It has also been found, historically, that additional comfort and utility may be provided through the use of insoles, which may be provided in the footwear products at the outset or may be sold separately for being inserted into footwear products at a later time.
Footwear insoles may assume a variety of configurations and may use any of a wide variety of materials, and efforts are continually being made to improve upon any and all designs previously attempted. Footwear insoles may even be designed for aesthetic appeal as an adjunct to the aforementioned considerations, whether in the form of a particular textural pattern imparted to the insole, or of a given color scheme, or both.
The textural pattern found on the bottom side of a footwear insole, that is, on that side which disposed away from a wearer's foot and which interfaces with the inside of an actual footwear item, may have a significant impact on the degree of comfort experienced by the wearer and on various considerations relating to the overall utility of the footwear item in question.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,749,111 (Pearce) discloses a textural pattern employed in connection with a type of cushioning element that is known to have been employed in footwear insoles. Such a cushioning element presents what is described as a column buckling effect. Essentially, the material of a cushioning element may be so configured as to present “columns” of deformable material which, upon the application of a critical load which may, e.g., be provided by a protruberance on an object being cushioned, will cause the “columns” to “buckle” much as in the case of “column buckling” phenomena taken into consideration in basic structural engineering design. Though one who wears a footwear insole (or insert) utilizing this type of cushioning element does typically experience a cushioning effect, such a cushioning effect appears to be present at the expense of stability, since such a shoe insole is subject to undesirable degrees of movement.
Truform Manufacturing, Inc., of Athens, Tenn. presently manufactures a footwear insert (“Geo-Sole”) that involves a textural pattern (on its lower side) that is markedly different from the “column buckling” phenomenon discussed above. FIG. 1 is a view of the underside of such an insert (100), in this case for the right foot. Here, a repeated pattern of protrusions is provided in which each protrusion (102) has a three-pronged cross-sectional shape and has a thickness that varies from a minimum at the outer periphery of the shape (highlighted at 103) to a maximum along three central ridges (highlighted at 104) which help define the overall three-pronged shape. Generally, each prong 108 of most protrusions is oriented towards an apex defined by two adjacent prongs of a neighboring protrusion. A commonly sized gap is generally present between the outer periphery of each protrusion and that of each neighboring protrusion. Though this insole overcomes the aforementioned disadvantages of a “column buckling” arrangement to some degree, it has been found that stability related to reduced movement of the insole is still somewhat elusive.
Outside of the context of footwear, attempts have long been made to provide bodily comfort and support in contexts where such advantages may be of particular need. For instance, seniors have often experienced great discomfort with seating not only in everyday contexts such as the home and other venues (such as movie theaters, stadia, public transportation, medical offices) where there is a need to sit down, but in dedicated mobility equipment such as wheelchairs and motorized scooters. Support and comfort has been found to be of particular importance in the context of mobility equipment at the very least because of the need to adequately protect and cushion a body in the event of a sudden mechanical impact (such as the mobility equipment going over a bump, running into another object or being hit by another object).
In view of the foregoing, a need has been recognized in connection with providing a footwear insole that overcomes the shortcomings and disadvantages experienced with conventional arrangements. Needs have also been recognized in connection with according improvements in bodily support and comfort to items other than footwear.